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Sunday, April 11, 2010

Zenyatta Webcast-Strike 2

The NTRA failed with their attempted webcast of Zenyatta's 2010 debut and now the Daily Racing Form via drf.com has swung and missed at the 2nd pitch thrown as they also failed with Friday's attempted webcast of Zenyatta in the Apple Blossom.

You know the ole saying: Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. Well this time not expecting much I had a backup plan in place-I fired up my computer browser on drf.com at the same time my TV was turned onto to my local OTB (Capital-OTB) Simulcast channel.

After attempting to see the webcast on drf.com and only getting a "Video feed not currently available" message I checked the blogosphere and Twitter verse, saw that it was just not me who could not get connected to the webcast and than I gave up, satisfied that at least I had the old familiar OTB simulcast video feed on my trustworthy Television.

This webcast thing is becoming laughable.

Who gets to try and swing at the 3rd pitch webcast when Zenyatta races next (hopefully at Belmont Park in June)? Maybe give bloodhorse.com a shot, or Thoroughbred Times or ....oh, just forget it!

9 comments:

Cathy
said...

I'm glad you mentioned this. I tried unsuccessfully to watch NTRA's failed attempt when Rachel and Zenyatta ran March 13, and had a similar helping of fail Saturday when I tried to login to DRF and watch it there.

Had to pay HRTV Live for the privilege on both these occasions, so at least I was able to watch.

I don't know why this is so hard. If you invite people to log on and watch a live feed, wouldn't you determine prior to the occasion if you hand the required bandwidth, equipment and software?

Capital OTB also had their reliable signal available to stream Zenyatta's race in the "Members Only" section of their website! They stream all the tracks except NYRA and a few others. If you have an account you could have viewed it there free!

...there's a little difference between FIVE people watching Ernie Munich vs prob 20K hitting a server at once. Racing is trying to do more streaming, which they have never done before...AND, i've watched the last two ntra webcasts and they've been great! all people do is bitch...human nature i guess.

The part that bugs me is that the technology is out there to stream high-demand live events (UStream), but the racing websites keep trying to do it their own way instead of just setting up a channel on Ustream. They want people to register... but if their server won't even let people register (much less login), they're failing their customers and missing opportunities.

They should have just taken the live-stream out from behind the wall, or set-up an auxiliary channel to handle the overflow and keep fans happy.